


Grandchildren

by Persephone_Kore



Series: Grandchildren [1]
Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Family, Family Drama, Multi, myth/movie mashup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Kore/pseuds/Persephone_Kore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Without changing movie events, Odin was actually a pretty good dad, not to say he didn't make any mistakes, but he did his best. -bloodraevynn</p><p>Thor (2011) fic with supplementation from the Eddas. Odin, and his son, and his grandchildren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleipnir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BloodRaevynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodRaevynn/gifts).



Loki's favorite horse was still in her pasture. 

Odin leaned on the fence and regarded her until Skrudda came over and waited expectantly for a treat. He pulled a carrot (they lined all the fences), brushed off the dirt, and broke it up to feed to her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. 

Loki had insisted he could keep their builder from finishing the city wall, and had gone out. (It had been obvious the man was more than he seemed, but they had underestimated how much. They had sworn safety to him until the deadline, and after the wall was completed; and then they had watched a spell take shape in the stones to pull down all the buildings they enclosed.) Odin had seen the mare running ahead of the builder's stallion. Now the mare was here, clean and well rested, and his son had not returned. 

Odin brushed his hands clean and went inside. After the builder was dead, he went down and waited during the nights, in a cloak and hat of muted shades that melded into the shadows when he was still. After several days, he found two of the mare there. One was still clean and fresh; the other had dried foam on her flanks, bits of tree in her mane and tail, and at least two sore feet. 

"Loki," Odin said, and the weary mare shied and started to turn away. Odin vaulted the fence and wound his hand in the tangled mane. Burrs pricked his palm. "Stay. Can you speak?" 

Loki's skin shuddered, and he tossed the mare's head, nearly wrenching Odin's shoulder, and didn't answer. 

Odin sighed. "Shall I tell you what happened instead, then?" 

Loki gave a rather unhorselike groan and said, "Please don't." A pause. "None of the real mares were in season." 

"How thoroughly," Odin asked, his voice a bit drier than he'd really intended, "did you think this through?" Feeling it was probably unfair to insist on an answer, he added, "Can you not change back?" 

"I'm not sure. It doesn't feel--" That tone usually went with one of Loki's rare blushes, and the head borrowed from Skrudda lowered in shame. "I think I'm pregnant. Further along than it should be. It kicks. A _lot_." 

That could have trapped the shapechange. "After _days_?" Odin frowned and ran a hand along Loki's flank, then cursed under his breath. "This is a hazard sometimes with magical horses. Worse if it's both parents, and certainly Svadilfari must have been one too. You must be exhausted. Come -- you should eat and be cleaned." 

Loki snorted and balked after Odin's first step. "To the stables? Will you keep me there?" 

"I will get the currycombs and hoof picks there," said Odin. "Then we'll see."

Loki stood still for grooming, in the end, and had to be restrained from eating more than was healthy. Odin performed the diagnostic spells himself and spun the spindly shadow-image of the foal slowly in front of Loki. "Eight legs," he remarked. "No wonder it kicks." 

"Father," Loki said. His voice trembled in the mare's throat. "What will we say?" 

Odin sighed and ran a hand over the now-glossy neck. "You have copied Skrudda very exactly. And her dam is my own steed's full sister, after all, so it is not surprising if the line produces another eight-legged foal."

Loki relaxed slowly, one muscle group at a time. "If we call it hers, it will mostly be true." 

"Yes." 

"Can I name it?" 

Odin stopped and blinked. "What?"

"You name all the horses! I think after this much trouble I should get to name one." 

"Yes, Loki," Odin said, trying very hard not to laugh. "You may name the foal." 

"Good." Loki might have been laughing a little too, even if it came out as a whicker. "I... think I'll go to sleep now. Here. I don't feel like stairs."


	2. Triplets

Loki came before him in private, deathly pale, his shoulders tense under a heavy cloak and frost still in his hair and eyelashes, and said defiantly, "I have just come from Jotunheim." 

Odin's first thought was that Loki had discovered his birth and abandonment, and his heart clenched, but all he said was, "Have you." 

Loki threw back the cloak with one elbow, and Odin saw that his son held in his arms a still infant and a squirming puppy, with a glassy-scaled snake wrapped around his wrist. "These are my children." 

Odin regarded this bewildering tableau in silence for a moment and then came to relieve Loki of the wolf pup. It wriggled harder and gnawed blindly at his fingers with toothless gums. "These are more of a riddle to me than Sleipnir." 

Loki scraped his teeth across first his lower lip and then the upper. "I have had a Jotun lover." Blood rushed into his cheeks at that. "I thought -- never mind what." 

"I can guess," Odin said. "I was your age once." 

"She threw our children away." Loki was shaking. Odin thought it was most likely with anger. "Angrboda. She put them outside and refused to feed them, and said it was because they were malformed. Monsters. But they're... they're only strange." He hesitated. "Is it because they're half Jotun and half Asgardian?" 

What a question. "No. Although I do not know why they are... as they are." Odin caught himself scratching the wolf pup's ears and spent a moment debating whether that was an appropriate way to treat one's grandson. Probably, if he happened to be a puppy. 

"I took them." Loki looked down at the two he still held, then glanced at Odin and the wolf. "They _are_ welcome in Asgard?"

Odin nodded. "It may be a little warm for them, but I think we can manage. At least it isn't summer." 

Loki frowned at him. "It will be eventually." 

"Yes, but they won't be newborns then. Come, if Angrboda wasn't feeding them, it's surely time we did." 

This proved somewhat more complicated than Odin's previous experiences with feeding children. It was just as well that Frigga had startled them both by emerging from the long-unused royal nursery as they approached it, and seemed entirely unfazed by everything. 

The wolf pup Loki called Fenrir, and he was the easiest. He lay on his stomach and took chilled goat's milk with blood and eggs beaten into it from a bottle. Despite the lack of teeth, it was battered when he was done. 

The baby girl Loki called Hel. She was very still and cool to the touch, not like a frost giant but like a corpse that had assumed the temperature of its surroundings, so that it was a shock when she opened her eyes and looked at them. When Frigga took her from Loki, he couldn't use the arm that had held her for several minutes, and Frigga eventually admitted her skin was starting to go numb. Odin frowned and took her, and sensed that it was because he helped to preside over death that touching her didn't have the same effect on him. 

The snake Loki called Jormungand. He wound tightly enough around Loki's wrist to restrict circulation and drank milk with no enthusiasm whatsoever, right up until Frigga went away and returned carrying a live mouse, at which point he unwound and lunged across the room after it. 

Loki was largely and uncharacteristically silent, speaking only as necessary, until all three were asleep. Jormungand's skin was already starting to look a little stretched and shiny. Then words burst from him, as if he had to catch up. "How could she do this?" Loki demanded. "She could have given them to me. Could have said she'd borne them, so I should raise them. I went to her and she said she'd given birth and they were gone now. I had to go out and search through a blizzard. Jormungand was torpid." He turned, eyes flashing. "What have I been in love with? Is this how the frost giants treat their children?" 

Odin exchanged a pained look with Frigga; she opened her mouth and drew breath, and he shook his head slightly and answered instead. "It could hardly be usual." 

"Then perhaps it was my own foolishness in thinking she could love any of us." Loki picked Hel up and cradled her over his heart, which Odin strongly suspected was not wise. "I am never returning to Jotunheim." 


	3. Hel

Hel grew up a sweet child, and very attached to her grandfather, who was able to hold her indefinitely without his arms going numb. When she could sit up, Odin took her into Valhalla with him and presided there with her on his knee. The mortal slain adored her; for all the pleasure of battlefield and table, many of them had been fathers and left behind little ones they missed. And if she developed a somewhat bloodthirsty taste for watching the fights and hearing tales of war, this was not a trait that exactly stood out in Asgard. 

She also grew up ever more clearly a death goddess. Midges and flies were drawn to her and dropped before they could bite, which didn't bother anyone; in fact, before she threw the first milk tooth into her father's fire, there wasn't a dog with fleas left in the city. 

But it didn't stop there. Smaller animals began to grow lethargic under her hands. Flowers wilted as she plucked them, and her touch became more rapidly numbing and then actively uncomfortable. When she began her adolescence, grass withered where she walked, food spoiled on her plate, and wine soured if left too near her. She smiled seldom and began to go gloved even in summer. She touched no living person outside her family without a barrier between them, and no animal smaller than a large dog at all. 

Odin could still touch her with no stranger effect than noting the cool of her skin, and as she came into womanhood, the younger men among the newly slain began to fall in love with her, so her hands were kissed no less often than those of any young goddess. Her brothers were exceptionally sturdy, though Fenrir's fostering with Tyr meant he was around somewhat less. Frigga and Thor touched her as casually as they did any other relative, but were practical enough to keep it brief. 

Loki had never been reconciled to being cautious about touching his daughter, and Hel became gradually more skittish around him. Odin saw this, and tried once to suggest to Loki that he make more of a point of letting go when he began to feel his skin deaden, and they wound up shouting at one another. 

One day, her horse -- which had seemed to do well enough up to that point, with a special saddle -- staggered and collapsed even as she leapt off it in alarm. Loki found her crying next to the stable, and he knelt and propped himself against the wall and held her. She leaned into him unthinkingly and wept, until she opened her eyes and saw that her tears left blue-white bruises blooming on his skin, and that he was too still. She thrust herself away and bent over him anxiously until she saw that he was breathing, then fled in tears to her grandfather and told him everything. 

"Did this happen to you?" Loki asked, when he woke, and Odin stood over him in the healing rooms. His eyes were bright and desperate. 

Odin shook his head and sighed. "My domain is war, and death as a part of it. I can kill with a touch, but I had to learn how. I never had to learn how not to." 

Loki bit his lip and looked away. "I see." 

"Your daughter is more powerful than we guessed she would be." 

"I'm not going to like what you're about to say, am I." 

Odin closed his eye. "You will not. She will be -- no. Hel _is_ the reigning queen of death, Loki. She needs a place for her kingdom." 

"You're sending her away." 

"We will help her build a city to gather the dead." 

Hel built the city of Hel as a beacon in the mists of Niflheim -- cold and dim to the living, even the gleam of gold muted, but warm and bright to the scattered dead who flocked to it from every world, thronging her gates when they were only half built. She flung them open wide and worked around her new citizens, and when the building was done she scoured the realms for any who hadn't found their own way to her.

It was well for the dead who had been wandering, and it was well for the slain who could now be sure their kin had a home. It was even possible, now, for them to see one another -- though travel was rare, and not easy. So Helheim was a comfort to many, if not precisely a joy. 

But Loki wept as if his child had died beyond all seeking.


	4. Fenrir

Fenrir grew quickly. His body matured nearly as fast as that of any other wolf; his mind mingled the instincts of a wolf, the wit of a man, and the inexperience of a child. When he played with Odin's wolves, he quickly came to dominate them, because he was larger and stronger and smarter than they were, and while they were wiser, it wasn't enough. They liked his siblings better. Fenrir professed to be smug about this; Odin was inclined to believe him, and Loki thought he was hurt under the gloating.

The affections and pride of Odin's wolves were of limited concern. It was more of a problem that Fenrir tried to treat everyone else the same way and thought any success meant the other party should submit to him thereafter. Odin held his own well enough at the start; he earned several months of good behavior by a combination of a solid thrashing and teaching Fenrir how to take down an elk without getting his ribs bashed in. Sadly it didn't last. 

Loki stepped up his own training with both spells and weapons, and still found himself flat on his back one day when Fenrir was just over a year old, with a heavy paw on his chest and hot wolf-breath in his face. He shoved Fenrir back with all his strength, and sharp teeth snapped together, raking the skin of his throat. 

Loki clamped a hand around Fenrir's muzzle and realized swiftly that his fingers were not long enough to get a good grip anymore. He was wrestling with the thought of magic that might do more damage than he wanted, or perhaps none at all, when Fenrir's weight suddenly left him. 

He gasped in a breath and sat up to see Sif braced and hauling Fenrir back with both fists in the scruff of his neck. Fenrir was squirming, but he was young enough and had enough wolf-pup instincts that this kind of grip still made him want to go limp. Of course, getting behind him was the trick. Loki was working on how to be in two places at once, but wasn't sure if he'd be able to master it before Fenrir was too old for it to help. 

"Are you all right?" Sif asked.

Loki put a hand to the wetness at his throat and then examined his fingers. Clear, not red -- so the answer was probably yes. "I think so." Seeing her scowl down at Fenrir, he added a bit defensively, "He's still just a baby. Er... puppy." 

"I don't know about yours," said Sif, "but my parents really discouraged efforts to teethe on their jugulars." 

"I can just see you trying that," Loki riposted wearily, picking himself up. 

"Only once or twice," Sif said. 

Loki took a look at her face and decided he wasn't sufficiently sure it was a joke to laugh. "Little monster, were you?"

"Oh yes. Thinking of asking my father to babysit?" Sif let Fenrir go. He turned and growled at her. She growled back. 

Fenrir put his ears forward with an expression that suddenly made Loki remember both that _puppy_ was rapidly becoming a questionable designation as opposed to _adolescent_ and that despite being inexplicably wolf-shaped, there was no genetic reason for his son not to be attracted to Sif. "Not if you two are going to flirt," he said. "I don't think I'm prepared for that." 

Loki went reluctantly to Odin; Odin was surprised, and likewise reluctant, but spoke to Tyr on his son's behalf. Fenrir was delivered to Tyr and made his foster son and Sif's foster brother, not that this stopped him from trying to flirt with her. 

In the end, it didn't help. 

It seemed promising at first. Fenrir learned prudence and self-control; he lost his temper less often and if he injured someone, it was on purpose. He seemed calmer. Loki thought perhaps he was growing up.

Then one day Fenrir mentioned to Sif, as if this were a natural thing and not one he should even be cautious about mentioning, that he intended to eat Odin and rule Asgard in his place. 

Of course Sif argued. She also relayed the plan to Loki, who asked Fenrir. Fenrir casually confirmed it. When Loki recovered the power of speech, he tried to explain, at length and in detail, why this was a terrible idea on so very many levels. 

Fenrir listened to it all, yawned enormously, and said that Loki should be proud of him at the prospect. 

Loki went home with a heavy heart and a steady, painful drumbeat behind his eyes. 

He could not allow this. 

Odin was formidable. It was nearly impossible to imagine him defeated, let alone dead... and yet Fenrir seemed to grow stronger every hour. The attempt alone would justify execution. Success was unthinkable. Loki could not allow Odin to be murdered. He could not allow Fenrir to try.

Loki pressed fingers into his aching temples and thought. 

And then, he went to the dwarves. 

He returned from their forges with three chains: one heavy but much like normal chains; one so massive he could barely move it; and one thread-thin, whisper-thin and shining, of materials that had taken him months to gather. It was beautiful, half-imaginary, and strongest, and Fenrir would laugh and possibly take a bite of him if Loki proposed it first. 

The second chain was a problem, actually; Loki moved it by magic and still collapsed in a rather undignified heap of exhaustion as soon as he arrived at the end of the Bifrost. As there was no horse in Asgard that could bear the thing, Heimdall called on Jormungand, who was so long by now that his tail didn't come onto the bridge by the time he arrived. Jormungand looked at the chains and then at his father, sadly, and then picked them all up and brought them into the city. 

"Fenrir," Loki said, having gone to Tyr's house as soon as he had recovered. "Let's play a game to show your strength. I have a chain called Laedingr; can you break it? 

Tyr and Sif both looked at him sharply. Fenrir laughed. "Of course I can. Bind me and see." 

They took him to a mountain outside the city. Laedingr snapped when Fenrir first lashed out against it. 

A week later, Fenrir looked briefly askance at the second chain, Dromi but then grinned and accepted the challenge. "I think you should all stand back," he warned them, nearly buried in the chain. Loki and Sif and Tyr all retreated from him, Tyr not quite so far, and Fenrir planted his feet and strained -- and chunks of metal flew wide. They all had to try to dodge, and Tyr was pinned awkwardly under a curved section of one link. Fenrir trotted over and picked it up in his jaws to cast aside. "I warned you," he said. "You should listen to me when I warn you."

"Yes," said Loki, coming to help Tyr up. "We really should." 

"So was that the best you could do?" 

Loki looked him in the eye and smiled with no joy at all. "No, it isn't."

After another week, Loki brought the last chain, the slender one, Gleipnir. Fenrir looked at it and said, "You must be joking." 

"Don't tell me you're going to balk at this little thing?"

"I'm not an idiot," Fenrir grumbled. "I'll get no glory from breaking it and I think you are up to something, Father." 

"He's always up to something," said Tyr. Loki resisted glaring at him.

"Yes." Fenrir's eyes slitted. "That's what worries me." 

"Trust me," Loki said, forcing amusement into his voice, "you'll get no glory from refusing to be bound by a thread, either." 

Fenrir growled. 

"I'll give you a pledge," said Tyr. "My hand between your teeth, if you and we both fail to free you."

So they went out to the mountain a third time, and Fenrir grumbled indistinctly around Tyr's hand about letting himself be decked out in pretty ribbons. Loki took care not to trap Tyr with him, then stepped away.

Fenrir bent his back and strained -- and Gleipnir did not break. He thrashed, kicked, ever more frantic, while Tyr stood unflinching, and the slender golden ribbon held. (Loki went and looped the rest of the length of Gleipnir under the roots of the mountain.) He let go of Tyr to tear at it with his teeth, and still it held. 

Finally he crouched under the shining thread and said to Tyr, "Free me." 

Tyr was silent -- and put out his hand again. 

Loki looked away as Fenrir's teeth gnashed together and the blood spurted. Sif leaped in to pull her father back, as he stumbled and Fenrir tried to lunge. 

Fenrir howled, fury and betrayal, a noise that battered at their ears until there was no room to think of anything but sound. 

"I'm sorry, my son," Loki said when the howl died. "But I--" He looked at Tyr and at the blood still running from his wrist. "We could not let you do as you intended." 

They left Fenrir behind and took Tyr to the healing room. 

Odin returned from a journey of his own that day to find his grandson bound, his best general maimed, and his son on a balcony staring empty-eyed toward the mountains. 

"Loki."

"Father." 

"What happened?" 

"Fenrir thought he could kill you and take Asgard. I--" Loki's voice faltered. "I tried to reason with him." 

Odin drew a long breath and let it out without speaking. He came to the railing and stood on the balcony with Loki until the falling night hid the raging wolf-child from their eyes.


	5. Jormungand

And Jormungand simply grew, larger and ever larger. He was bigger than Fenrir before long, though calmer when he wasn't hunting. He slowed down only in winter, when he was too sluggish to have much appetite; Odin wasn't sure whether he would have been smaller on Jotunheim or simply not survived. 

Loki saved the first shed skin out of sentiment; inside of nine months, he resorted to burning them and then caught Jormungand _eating_ them. Nobody was sure this was healthy, but given Jormungand's appetite, he compromised on insisting they be washed first. Odin bargained with the Vanir for cattle, at something of a disadvantage due to urgency, and came off best anyway. 

Thor took up fishing off the Bifrost for creatures that had not previously been considered seafood, which became suddenly more exciting when Jormungand came out to see what he was doing, spotted something with tentacles, and launched himself off the side of the bridge. Thor dropped the line and grabbed his impulsive nephew by the tail to haul him back hand over hand. When three quarters of Jormungand's length were coiling on the bridge behind him, Thor raised his arms as high as they could go, frowning at his dangling nephew. Jormungand turned his head right side up and raised it about to the level of Thor's feet, scowling as well as a toddler-aged snake could scowl.

"Can you even swim?" Thor asked, exasperated. "I don't blame you for wanting to wrestle a kraken, but maybe you should find that out first."

Jormungand paused and thought about this, then put his front end on the bridge and crawled the rest of the way on. "I like baths. I can breathe in water." 

Thor boxed his ears, too lightly to be any sort of effective deterrent, especially since he followed it up with, "Well, that helps. I'll get you an octopus for your next one, all right?" 

Thor was true to his word. Jormungand's next bath featured a large and remarkably well camouflaged octopus as something between bath toy and snack. The bath was also repeated, as soon as Jormungand could be maneuvered into a different tub, since everything in the vicinity had wound up covered in ink. Loki and Odin _both_ wanted to strangle Thor for that one. 

"The great mystery here," Odin said, "is how Thor got it _indoors_ without leaving a trail of ink. Or having anyone stop him to ask why he was carrying a bundle of tentacles."

"Father, no one stops Thor to ask what he's doing unless they think they might want to join in." Loki paused at this point to consider the great mystery. "Pinched glands," he suggested after a moment. At Odin's doubtful look, he offered more brightly, "Reassuring words?"

"I think that would be more your style," said Odin. "Please, don't try it."

By the time Fenrir went to live with Tyr, Jormungand was having trouble fitting through doorways. When Helheim was built, he had given up on living indoors. And at the time of Fenrir's binding, Jormungand could wrap all the way around Asgard's city walls and have enough length left over to visit the end of the Bifrost. People began to find going in and out of the gate a little disconcerting when he was home. They found visiting the seashore somewhat disconcerting instead, when he went out hunting; on the other hand, it became known that no one drowned when he was in the vicinity. 

Odin wasn't sure how the rumor about his grandson being a lindworm started. It wasn't as if Jormungand actually _barred_ anyone from entering or leaving Asgard. Usually. To be sure, a habit had developed of introducing convicted criminals to him to deter attempts to flee the city, but any good citizen would make the same effort to prevent such escapes. Though in most cases, with less... odor detection. Or infrared vision. Or demonstrable ability to swallow offenders alive.

He did make a magnificent archway.

By the time he could wrap three times around the city and it had become necessary to enter and exit via a rather long covered walkway roofed with giant serpent, Odin had to face the fact that it was becoming decidedly impractical to keep Jormungand where he was. He survived the winters, but he could no longer be sheltered, nor even warmed enough for comfort... or, in some cases, enough to keep people from having to mountaineer over him. (Fortunately, most people had the sense not to travel in such conditions.) Feeding him was very difficult when he couldn't fish, and eating his fill only made him larger. 

Loki found the two of them discussing the relative merits of Asgard's and Midgard's oceans and promptly stormed off. Odin tracked him to the balcony where they could see Fenrir, said, "Loki," and waited for him to reply.

At length, Loki said bitterly, "Will you send the last of my children away without even discussing it with me first?" 

"No." Odin gave him a wry look. "But Jormungand mentioned swimming. And you would be no happier if I spoke to you before him."

Loki stared into the distance, unfocused and unseeing. Odin saw his eyes shimmer. "No. I suppose not." 

\---

It was very nearly too late to send him off planet. Heimdall opened the Bifrost with Jormungand's nose already pressed against the gate. His forepart streaked away in the rainbow light to plunge into Midgard's frothing sea, and he crawled as fast as he could -- awkward, this straight-on motion -- to catch up with himself and get through before the bridge could begin to do greater damage than a mere maelstrom. Odin didn't think it looked comfortable, but Heimdall assured them that Jormungand seemed well enough on the other end. He unraveled from around the city walls, surging down the bridge, and at length his tail vanished as well. A moment later, Heimdall said he was exploring his new home, with every sign of planning to visit every corner of the watery planet's oceans. 

Loki stayed there, for a long time, and Heimdall did not insist on speaking with him. A week or so later, Odin found him on the balcony where they had argued, briefly, before, and Loki burst out, "Must I lose _all_ my children?"

"I hope not." Odin sighed. "He is more comfortable there."

"So Heimdall says."

Odin had long since reconciled his own more secretive impulses to Heimdall's far-reaching senses, but it had become easier once Heimdall was under his authority. So for now, he didn't argue for Loki to be more trusting. "Ask Jormungand yourself, then. You _can_ visit." 

Loki sighed; his breath caught halfway through it. "It's not the same." He swallowed, blinking rapidly and then staring fixedly ahead with his head tipped back. "The walls look all wrong now." 

Odin closed his own eye, feeling the ache of sorrow behind it. "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> Loki's mare is, if my research was correct, named "Old Tome."


End file.
